Monday, 2 January 2017

Washington Post has to backtrack on false news story

The
Washington Post has corrected an article in which it said that
Russian hackers had infiltrated the US power grid at a Vermont
utility. The newspaper now says authorities have no such
“indications” as people on social media claim the outlet promotes
“fake news.”

On
Friday, Burlington Electric, a Vermont-based power company, raised an
alarm after finding malware code on a company laptop. Referring to
undisclosed officials, the Washington Post then ran a damning
headline, saying that “Russian
operation hacked a Vermont utility” which
posed a risk “to
US electrical grid security.”

Yet
it turns out that the laptop that was penetrated wasn’t even
attached to the power network, according to a statement from
Burlington Electric. “We
detected suspicious internet traffic in a single Burlington Electric
Department computer not connected to our organization’s grid
systems,” the
message reads.

No
evidence of a Russian trace has been released either. Eventually, the
Washington Post issued a correction to
its article. “An
earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers
had penetrated the US electric grid. Authorities say there is no
indication of that so far,” the
statement said. The headline, blatantly accusing “Russian
hackers” of
breaching the US power grid, remains, though.

Glen
Greenwald, a prominent US journalist who was among those breaking the
story on Edward Snowden’s leaks on the NSA spying scandal, said the
case suits America’s anti-Russian agenda. “It
matters even more because it reflects the deeply irrational and
ever-spiraling fever that is being cultivated in US political
discourse and culture about the threat posed by
Moscow,” Greenwald wrote.

It’s
not the first time the Washington Post has had to correct a report
containing ill-founded allegations. On November 24, an article by
the newspaper alleged that Russia is in fact behind a massive spread
of “fake
news”
which affected the US presidential campaign in November last year.

One
of the experts cited by the newspaper was a group called PropOrNot,
which “identified” over
200 websites as spreading Russian propaganda. Yet the article drew
serious criticism from people on social media as well as journalists
over PropOrNot's own dubious credentials.

In return, the
Washington Post issued a lengthy editor’s note, saying that some of
the sites included by PropOrNot “have
publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions.” The
group later deleted them and Washington Post on its part said that
does not “vouch
for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings.”

In
October, the US officially accused Russia of hacking computers of
individuals and organizations of the Democratic campaign ahead of the
US elections. Moscow rebuffed the accusation as “nonsense.”

Following
the victory of the Republican candidate Donald Trump, the Washington
Post, citing a CIA report, said that
Moscow specifically helped Trump to get into the White House.

The
President-elect called the
allegations “ridiculous” and
labeled them yet “another
excuse” by
the Democrats for the loss of Hillary Clinton. Speaking to RT,
a former member of the British MI5 intelligence agency, Annie Machon,
said that rolling out with a bright headline and later issuing a
correction is part of the Washington Post’s tactics.

“Time
after time after time, we are seeing this fake news coming out in the
Washington Post,” she
said. “And
every time they put these fake stories out they have to put [out] a
disclaimer afterwards. But of course, the seed is then sown,” Machon
said.